You've seen it all around lately: "What you think becomes your reality" ... "Everything begins with your thoughts" ... "Success begins with a state of mind" ... "Your reality is a reflection of your thinking" ... etc.

And if you feel these things are true, but don't exactly know what to do about it so that it means something to you personally, I am writing something that might help you jump on the bandwagon of those who agree.

This isn't about bypassing your actual feelings or denying or stuffing them. This is about, whenever possible, taking a moment to understand that you choose how you think, and what you do and do not do, and who you hang out with and don't hang out with, and what you read and don't read, and what you dwell on and what you drop, and what you ignore and what you focus on, every, single moment of your life. And your feelings are simply indicating how these choices are going for you--or not.

This is not to say that you choose how you feel. Because you don't. You choose what you do. You choose how you think about it, and you feel how you naturally feel given those two factors.

When you feel something, it is the thought associated with that feeling that allows you a chance to change your actions, position or perspective so that that feeling is no longer triggered in your life so profoundly.

Here are some approaches that help me get into the mental tapes that are playing and edit or change them, completely.

1. Pause. When you are ready to react strongly to something, pause. Wait to see how that feeling turns into the thoughts. This is very, very hard to do when you are overloaded or heated. I fail sometimes, but compared to the times I succeed now, it’s a small percentage. This pause may be five minutes or five days, however long it takes for the feeling to subside into the thoughts.

2. Check in. Keep checking back with yourself. How are you feeling? If the feeling is still there, what do you think about it? Is it still too painful or upsetting to think about it? Then leave it. Is it still confusing and bewildering? Raw? Wait (see step one, because you are still at that step!)

3. Reframe your position. Most times, when we are triggered by what someone says or a situation, it is because we feel helpless. Most times, we still have the residual mental tapes from childhood. We may think we are justified in, say, raising our voice with the service attendant at a store, but most times, we are not. We need to look below that feeling to the thought. The thought reveals all. Beneath that justified and irritated rant is the thought "you never listen to me ... you never take me seriously ... I don't matter to you ..." Beneath those hurtful words spoken to a lover during a fight are the thoughts "You think you will abandon ME? Well I will abandon YOU first ... I'm not good enough and never have been but I am ashamed so I don't want you to know this and I'm going to blame you ... you never pay attention to what I really need ... you don't know me at all or make an effort to ... "

You see? These are the deep thoughts. Now, once you get below the reactions and feelings, you see them. Once you see them, you have to ask yourself "Is this truly applicable to my situation right now? Or are these extreme carry-over tapes from my childhood projected onto people who trigger them?" The answers to these questions will help you see what to think and do the next time.

4. Forgive yourself and move forward. The people who love you will rejoice that you have found these answers but, if you notice, they will not have required you to do so to love you. And your own love for yourself needs to be this powerful. You need to love yourself despite your past mistakes. Because everyone else actually does. And the fact is: WE ARE ALL LIVING EXAMPLES OF HUNDREDS OF MISTAKES THAT TAUGHT US WHAT WE NEEDED TO KNOW TO GROW--YES, ALL OF US! Beyond a sincere apology, this step of actually going inside and transforming your own mindset and behavior will help heal rifts.

5. Meditate. Okay, not really. Meditation is technically the state of Samadhi. But it's a popular term used to describe the act of sitting still. Sit still, if you can every day. Try 10 minutes, then 15, then 20. In a chair. Keep your back away from the chair so that your spine is long and your sit bones root into the seat of the chair. This practice helps you develop a sense of slowed down time and opening of space. This is a great way to replace reactive patterns with responsive ones over the long run. But you have to do it regularly for the results to start to show themselves.

Life is not about perfect. It is about process. And we are all hear to reflect each other's process in a range of ways--comfortable and uncomfortable, helpful and discouraging. When we find out what is reflected, we have a choice to continue with that or change it--in thoughts and actions.

PS: Here are a couple of resources that might help as well. An amazing lecture I heard after writing this blog, which echoes the main points very well. And a playlist of vibration sounds to relax and open you to the present.

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On this Scorpio moon day, as I work on a painting, I meditate on an idea that graces my open mind.

It flew in like a bird and sat on the sill long enough for me to get a good look at it. I thanked it before it flew away. Here’s what it looked like:

Is it possible that you can be so in control that you spin yourself out of it? Throw yourself into a direction that is the opposite to where you would love to go? grip so tightly that you feel the very edge of your life as it is naturally, slip away?

Yes. It is possible. Because while we are co-creators of our realities, we need to cooperate with what the moments are trying to give us. And if we think we can manage this and control this, we will miss out on everything life wants show us—the destiny of our souls will be sorely limited and marked by constant friction.

Things that want to happen through us may happen, but far fewer, and with so much unnecessary tension. The universe will face palm itself and say “gosh this poor, fearful person who is actually capable, great and well endowed with so many resources doesn’t get it, AT ALL!”

But it will still love you, the universe. As if you were its only child. Don’t worry. And it will also spank you with more ideas to try to wake you up.

Maybe what you are reading is a little spanking from the universe? A friendly tap on the bum is what I believe was in the contract …

You are not alone, in anything you do. You did not conceive yourself or weave your DNA together or anything like that. You know this, darling. You didn’t.

Even if you lock yourself in isolation. Your thoughts will come and play in your mind. Just wait. It’s up to you, to do something. But then, after a while you really begin to see that you can’t even do anything to control THAT. If you are not able to distract yourself or talk to someone, you will see you have nothing left with which to control. The only option is to let go and detach. Because if you don’t figure out how to do this, you could get locked in a maze of thinking and “go nuts.”

You have to find the midpoint. Alone or in a chaotic situation. You have to find the midpoint. Where you let the universe in between you and what is happening. Where you CO-create. Where you admit that since you were a zygote, life has the lead on you and still does.

The meantimes are the most of times …

What could be so worth controlling that you focus on it this much?

Actually, there's just one thing:

The level of openness you maintain to what is actually happening. The level of presence you are able to cultivate in that moment to see the opportunities to CO-create with materials, with people, with nature.

I repeat what is worth repeating: OPENNESS is within your control.

To be a part of it all, you must choose, in any moment, against habit, against fear, against imagination, against what society tells you is cool to be a melancholy average person who writes sad songs—against it ALL: To Open up.

Let go of any exaggerated sense of control—which in the end puts you on the sidelines of your life, locked out of it!

Life avails so much more satisfaction when we control within the reasons of our evolving soul, and let go of the rest—when we allow our co-creator, the universe, with all of its knowledge about us, to join us, side-by-side.

On the wings of the breathtaking and cathartic #Metoo movement, I’d like to suggest that this is hardly the time to rest on laurels.

Put simply, if you consider standing up for yourself the end goal, you might just as well consider the feel-good kissing scene at the end of a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy a reliable forecast for the consistent tone of the entire relationship to come. We all know, deep down or obviously, it’s not.

And anyone will tell you who has done it; this moment after you stood up and said “enough!” is where the work actually begins.

The following ten points are attempts to capture possible projectiles that might fly in your direction the moment you stand up, and tips on how to not only interpret them but also handle them.

1. “Sit down. Yes, you, sit back down. No? Well I’m going to make you!” People in your life who have come to rely on you being submissive, silent, forgiving in the face of boundary violations will NOT appreciate you giving them a warning slip or a full-on ticket. You went through all this work to finally take a stand for yourself. Don’t let the actual role you now play overshadow why you took it on. You are ready to put yourself first. You mean business. Keep standing. Trust in the process. Do not be intimidated by their temporary fits of disappointment. Either they change how they treat you or the relationship does or both. Your business is simply to stand in your truth. (Incidentally, you might notice all kinds of random, daily-life situations start challenging you in this way—from returning something that is broken and insisting on the refund to asking to switch rooms in a hotel because of the mold in the shower—keep standing and you get more and more deeply calm in the face of them.)

2. "You’re just an/a [insert any number of manipulative names and coercive remarks that might look like this %*#@*!^ ] and you won’t be anything in the future." Learn to see that other people’s opinions are limited to their own experiences of their own truths and their own capacity to understand what you are doing or who you are. If they don’t have the capacity, it’s not up to you to shrink or be less than, even if they wish for you to do so. You have stood up, broken out of the mold of how they perceive you. You will see, the world is much bigger than their little opinion.

3. The dead silent still of night when all of your anxieties fly up and tell you that you never should have done it. Darling,best thing I can tell you is that this is a clever little zone called “the meantime” that the universe custom made to fit the exact period and time that you could cave into doubt and again throw yourself under the rushing bus of other people’s wishes. This is a test. It’s only a test. Wait it out. Watch a funny video. Raise your vibration in this meantime and stay connected to that gut feeling—that run-for-your-life-from-this-burning-house-of-co-dependence knowing—that drove you to stand in the first place.

4. Friend, partner, colleague: “I love you, I believe in you, you are magnificent and you did the right thing”—to which you respond in your mind or out loud “oh, come ON.” This is a really tricky yet important one. Someone has been browbeating the shit out of you and you stood up for yourself. Then someone who genuinely has the capacity to love, respect, appreciate you comes to back you up. Keep that person ON your team in all respects, even in your thoughts. Actively hug them back. Look them in the eyes and say “thank you.” They see you and have watched you suffer. Recognize your future tribe and all the angelic presence around you and praise the hell right out of it!

5. "I didn’t mean it … lighten up." Wow, that took some effort, didn’t it? No. It didn’t. You are not being heavy. You are not being anything but how you need to be to start enforcing some boundaries. And if it’s been a long pattern of abuse (from passing insults to full-on molestation, it all counts), it will take time for those boundaries to stick. You must hold them. And you will be accused of being too serious, too heavy, boring, ect. In this case, best thing to do is distance more—the person who would turn the table like this is miles from self reflection and likely needs a few more lessons in their world. You don’t. Moving on.

6. Friend requests, follows, likes, adds, other cheap tricks. These wimpy excuses to get back in your life are just that. Until there is an actual apology and admittance that what you said was considered, reflected upon and put into action in terms of changes, think twice for letting people creep closer. Make them step forward with some more solid evidence as to why you should let them back in.

7. Compliments and small gestures to lure you back open. Best thing you can do when you decide that you are first is throw away your addiction to praise or blame as markers for your own life. They have nothing to do with the process you are beginning now. Your first priority now is to stand with yourself and then, after that, judge carefully who gets to be in the inner, middle and acquaintance level of your social life. People warming you up better work harder than just what it takes to smirk and say to themselves “hmm well that was easy.”

8. "Why are you doing this to me?" If you were the one feeling beaten down, overlooked, abused, disregarded, degraded, or any of the whole family of these sad power-over situations, you are not doing anything to anyone to step away and take care of yourself. The best thing you can do for the entire world is to make sure you are taking care of yourself, first. As an adult, nobody else will do this. So as you come back into your power, you come back into your responsibility. Let others come back into theirs, too.

9. "It’s not very spiritual or kind of you to be acting like this." Great book suggestion: Spiritual Bypassing, by Robert Augustus Masters. This book is one every yoga teacher, spiritual guide, healer, student and seeker would do well to read. We are human. We are wired according to some fundamental laws of survival and behavioral realities that surround this. One thing is for sure, the person who is “good all the time,” is not enlightened. They are in-fact acting. Look carefully. Investigate how they treat others. Do your research before you buy the argument that YOU are the one with the problem. Projection is so convincing because the person is so convinced their wrongs are actually yours. You don’t have to be.

10. "Let’s start over." Ah-ah-ah. Not so fast. Slow this train down. Don’t let people slip out of uncomfortable conversations, self-reflection, discussion and boundary agreements. When someone says this, ask yourself if they are very clear on what went wrong, what you need to feel balanced and what kind of changes need to be made. Did you really talk everything over to your satisfaction as well as theirs? Treat it like a trial period. You don’t have to say “okay—I am wide open once again.” Have some respect for your own process. Let it be a process and take the time it needs to change. Relationship dynamics and respect-building take time to get straight.

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